The Russellville Democrat., 1887-06-29
STREET POLITENESS.
An Essay Toward Proving That Manner
 Should Make Women IS Well IS Men.

An Essay Toward Proving That Manners
 Should Make Women Well Men.
 The ladies of this city are rapidly learning to keep to the right on muddy crossings, and are also adopting other simple courtesies which are putting them to the front as the handsomest and best of the sisterhood in America, but occasionally an obstinate, strong minded, contrary specimen is encoun- tered, who will persist in ambling to the left, or doing some other equally inconsistent and unnecessary act. A gentleman who has travelled extensively in Europe remarked to reporter, while discussing some of the characteristics of the gentler sex, that the men of America are largely to blame for the disposition of some of the fair creatlTes to take this surrender of every thing as matter of course, for they have so long treated them with such gallantry that many have been educated into re- garding as right what is simply a courtesy In Paris or Vienna, for in stance, if street car be crowded with males, and lady should enter, not one of them would venture to offer seat, and the lady herself would not expect it. The women there have never been taught that they had any more rights than man, and for that reason, if an American should extend courtesy he is accustomed to at home, he would be stared at as an Anak, and even the lady herself would be tempted to regard it as impertinent And then he said that the ungallantries to the ladies to be met with across the Continent were sufficient to keep an Americans blood boiling, and he never wanted to see similar rudeness extend to this country, although the ladies sometimes invited it by the matter-of-fact way in which they pre-empted every thing in the line of accommodation to which their fancy inclined.
 It was Florence Marryat who once wrote that Americans excelled all na- tions in attention to their women, but that the American ladies were the most unmanneIly; but she awarded the palm of boorishness to the men of her own nationality, which is English. In New York, and even in cultivated Bos. ton, a churlish treatment of ladies in public conveyance is beginning to make itself felt, and in the former city the Sun sneerin gly speaks of an incl dent on car, where gentleman sur rendered his seat as Host art The average American, however, whether rich or lowly, is proud of chance to be tender and chivalric to lady, and he is amply compensated if his courte- sy be recognized as courtesy, and not accepted as q right.
 It seems like little thing to keep to the right on muddy crossing, but there are many ladies walking abreast who never stop to consider the limited pas sage, and coolly appropriate it as they would a seat in a car. There are men. too, who do this thing, but as gener- al thing they do it at the risk of being pushed to one side, for they know that while the average man will take a good deal off woman he will stand no fool ishness from one of his own sex, and will elbow him into the mud without the slightest compunction of conscience if he neglected to obey the common law of keeping to the right. Iadia'sap- Oiis Neios.